RAPPORT
like to propose that TE occurs in an institution when individual teaching practices are judged to be( a) aligned to the clear purposes,( b) are effective in achieving their goals, and( c) are regularly revised and improved.
The first element refers to the alignment that must exist between individual teaching practices / activities and shared goals( e. g. learning objectives), which in turn relate to the institutional mission, that has to various degrees the students’ needs at the forefront( Biggs, 1999). Verification of congruence( practices to goals) and also coherence( goals to mission) are routinely carried out during reviews or audits, mostly as paper-based exercises, but can include observations of practice. Here, the picture that comes to mind is that of a system that does what it is meant to do because each of its components behaves as expected. Perhaps a high-quality clockwork mechanism is an appropriate metaphor.
A second element refers to effectiveness / impact of an institution, department or an individual tutor. In one sense, this may be understood to be fulfilled where practices are applied which achieve the goals proposed. Beyond the existence of practices designed to deliver the specified goals, this requires that the practices actually produce the intended results. Likewise, effectiveness, in a second sense, can refer to situations where practices are adapted to ensure that they achieve the goals, entailing monitoring and readiness to modify practices where it is deemed necessary.
A third important element of excellence is critical engagement. This refers to a commitment to continuous improvement on the part of an institution and its individual members, an ongoing search to improve practices, to do things better. This notion became popular in management schools under the guise of‘ quality circles’ in the 1980s( Ishikawa, 1985).
Finally, excellence requires validation and certification. This judgement by an auditor leads to a recognition by a community( e. g. a professional body or an independent agency). In HE, judgements about one’ s quality of teaching are made by a peer who observes one deliver a lecture or a tutorial, in terms of whether it is helping the students achieve certain learning outcomes. Also, an external reviewer or team of reviewers( e. g. from the Quality Assurance Agency or a professional) can make more general judgements about the quality of teaching in a department or institution as a whole. The outcomes of such reviews can then be made public and be used to take corrective actions or to advertise the quality of the teaching at an institution. reviews.
WWW. RECORDINGACHIEVEMENT. AC. UK Issue 1( 2017)
We are all familiar which such
Teaching excellence in the context of HE It is our view that we need to take into account the specificity of the( culture of) HE sector and even of each university in order to understand what it means to assess the quality of teaching and make judgements about TE, because the goals and missions are different, a point made by Gibbs( 2010), among others. It is useful, at this point, to consider different types of universities, in a similar way as Professor Ron Barnett has done( Barnett, 2011, 2013), because they imply distinct appreciations of teaching excellence. Indeed, the report of the Technical Consultation on the TEF( HoCBISC, 2016) talks of‘ allow( ing) for diverse forms of excellence to be identified and recognised’( p. 5). For example, teaching excellence means different things in the‘ bureaucratic university’ and in an‘ entrepreneurial university’, to use two of Barnett’ s types. A bureaucratic university may have been the type of university most readers experienced a decade or so ago. It is one where practices are carried out by individuals according to their specified roles for which they are qualified. The performance of these practices is recorded in forms that are constantly updated and therefore, congruence can be audited at any time( e. g. by comparing handbooks and reports). The emphasis is not on the goals or the mission( the‘ why’), but on the accuracy and currency of the documentation( records of‘ how’ things are done). This translates into a notion of teaching excellence which focussed on the production of outstanding course documentation that demonstrates how practice related to goals at the level of a course and ultimately addresses the university mission( congruence). Some of us may remember the frequent modifications of the forms, justified for reasons of audit and documentation, and ultimately accountability.
Similarly, we can consider the‘ entrepreneurial university’, which many of us find ourselves in during these more recent times. Here the concern, in increasingly‘ competitive’ HE market contexts, is with performance and league tables, where many universities seek to establish a recognised brand, particularly to recruit valuable international students and researchers. In this type of university, teaching occupies a certain place, perhaps way down the list under other more important aspects such as research capacity, income generation, links with industry and marketing. Therefore, teaching excellence may become a feature of a department that can be used effectively as part of its marketing strategy. In universities with a‘ widening participation’ agenda, student intakes are very diverse and have chequered experiences of previous education. Many non-traditional
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